Known to a generation of students as the translator of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, and a biographer of Jose Rizal, Leon Ma. Guerrero is a writer and diplomat whose work was translated to reach today’s generation through the LMG Centennial “History in 100 Tweets”. According to his son David Guerrero, “the exhibit imagines how he may have tried to reach today’s generation. And distills some of his writing into the 140-characther platform we have become so familiar with.” I myself have been following Twitter for updates, and it is amusing to see the perspective of a statesman whose influence in the academe, as well as political affairs, is notable. It is disclaimed that much of the context will be lost in the 140-character platform, but still, you can understand what he was trying to say.

The Ayala Museum and the Filipinas Heritage Library opened the interactive exhibit on the life of Leon Ma. Guerrero to share his works for today’s millennial generation. There is an audiovisual presentation of a typewriter with some of the tweets, and 100 white boxes with short quotations, not more than 140 characters, from the diplomat’s writings. The entrance of the exhibit features an interactive chance to hear some clips of the Noli Me Tangere audiobook, read in English. It is refreshing to hear again the voices of Crisostomo Ibarra, Sisa and Padre Damaso.

Leon Ma. Guerrero, known to his close friends and family as Leoni, is known as the writer of “The First Filipino,” a biography of our national hero Jose Rizal, which won him the grand prize at the Rizal Centennial Biography contest in 1961. According to historian Ambeth Ocampo, “Guerrero took the heart of stone from Rizal, exchanged it with a beating heart of flesh, and gave color to a life story that has since become my area of expertise.”

Some of the tweets mention how Rizal is a patriotic hero who was not able to experience the revolution he started, and on his soft side, how he truly loved Josephine Bracken. There are some tweets which also focus on Leoni’s life as an ambassador and an internationalist. It can be truly understood how he was an intellect and a fighter using the pen as a weapon, which is similar to how Jose Rizal used his writings to show his love for the Philippines. Leoni considered his typewriter as a “lucky typewriter” which he used to type the draft of “The First Filipino.” At the beginning of World War II, he buried it in the garden of his house, and found it when he dug it up after the war.

Leon Ma. Guerrero lives through his writings. His works surely inspire today’s generation to fight for the upliftment of our country through all possible means.

These Ensemble Players challenge the possibilities of performance as they embark on some acrobatics of the heart in PAGE-TO-STAGE: One-Woman Performance Series featuring one-woman performances of Filipino literature classics.

These pieces are usually staged with a big cast but will now be machinated by only one performer onstage – using monodrama, puppetry, digital technology, sound art, and other media.

These one-woman performances will push the limits of performance possibilities by maximizing the artists’ skills and stretching their capacity to create and transform while making the work more accessible to more audiences. These One-Woman Performance Series will be available for nationwide school tours and art gallery performances.

Kicking off the series is Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer an experimental one-woman performance of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere that will push beyond the usual retelling of the novel and push on re-imagining heroes, nation, and imagined histories.

Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer (A One-Woman Performance) features one actor’s performance on Rizal’s 1886 novel, Noli Me Tangere. This devise-work features puppetry, digital technology, sound art, and other media machinated by one Sipat Lawin Ensemble Player. The performance kicks off this October with Meila Romero-Payawal.

Romero’s collaborators include multi-disciplinary visual artist-designer and Thirteen Artist Awardee Leeroy New, composer and sound desinger for film, theater, and television Teresa Barrozo, filmmaker Brandon Relucio and resident technical director and lights designer Ninya Bedruz. Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer is directed by Sipat Lawin’s Artistic Director Jk Anicoche with dramaturgy by Ensemble Player Ness Roque.

Going beyond the usual narrative retelling of the novel, Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer pushes a performative reading and re-imagining of the Noli Me Tangere, as well as Jose Rizal himself, and imagined histories as structures and icons continouosly deconstructing and reconstructing nation.

NOLI ME TANGERE Exposiciòn Dela Una Mujer is part of Sipat Lawin’s Page-to-Stage mobile performances and is available for local and international touring.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Sipat Lawin Ensemble is an edge-work, site-specific, independent performance company composed of theater artists, engaged in devising relevant new works. Changing the landscape of theater in the Philippines, the group aims to develop a contemporary community theater experience shared among artists and audiences inside and/or outside the four walls of the theater. The Ensemble’s core group of artists also manages the company and its programs alongside producing and developing performances and alternative modes of theater-making.

Stripping theater down to bare essentials of Actor, Action, and Audience, the company started independently producing works in alternative performance spaces in 2009. Since then, Sipat Lawin has produced a series of ensemble-devised anywhere-and-everywhere community collaborations.

As the country’s premiere site-specific theater company, Sipat Lawin Players have conducted performance lectures about their innovative works, alternative mode of production and evolving theater-making process, invited as speakers/performance-lecturers in Ateneo de Manila University’s Company Call 3 (2011), the Philippine Educational Theater Association’s Young Artists Forum (2012), Locus Redux International Art Conference at the Yuchengco Museum (2012), the CCP’s 13 Artists Awards Forum Series on “Collaborations and Crossing Media” (2012), as well as in two of This Is Not Art Festival’s “Critical Animals” panels in Newcastle, Australia (2013). In 2014, the Ensemble also launched Weekends with Sipat, blank-ticketed workshops where experts in different fields shared what they know through talks or workshops.

An active player in the social media platform, Sipat Lawin has been featured in local and international blogs, papers and programs by various networks and news agencies including GMA, Yahoo Philippines, Al-Jazeera and Reuters, among others.

The Ensemble aims to create and develop new forms of inter-action, social functions and modes of communication. Crossing and blurring boundaries among different performance media, SLE collaborates with top artists from different fields.

To the edge of consciousness, edge of theater-making.

Sipat Lawin Ensemble: Contemporary Community Theater, Contemporary Theater Community.